As uplifting as the tale of Scrooge itself, this is the story of how Charles Dickens revived the signal holiday of the Western world—now a major motion picture. Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist. The book immediately caused a sensation. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all. With warmth, wit, and an infusion of Christmas cheer, Les Standiford whisks us back to Victorian England, its most beloved storyteller, and the birth of the Christmas we know best. The Man Who Invented Christmas is a rich and satisfying read for Scrooges and sentimentalists alike. “In this small but remarkable book, Les Standiford offers readers a gift for all seasons. Carefully researched and written in a stately, lucid prose, this book will be cherished by those who love Dickens, enjoy Christmas, or ponder the endless mysteries of human behavior.” —Roland Merullo, author of American Savior “A wonderfully absorbing and revealing account, full of things I did not realize about A Christmas Carol , Charles Dickens, and the world of publishing. Once I started reading this book, truly, I could not put it down.” —Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the Fifties “ The Man Who Invented Christmas is destined to be a classic about a classic. As Tiny Tim might say, ‘God Bless Everyone,’ in this case Standiford, for creating such a delightful and engaging gem—part history, part literary analysis, and all heart, just like the book that inspired it.” —Madeleine Blais, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Uphill Walkers Les Standiford is the author of ten critically acclaimed novels as well as several works of nonfiction including Last Train to Paradise, The Man Who Invented Christmas, Meet You in Hell, and Washington Burning . He has received the Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is founding director of the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami and was appointed holder of the Peter Meinke Chair in Creative Writing at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg. He lives in Pinecrest, Florida, with his wife and three children. Nativity In London, in 1824, it was the custom to treat a debtor little differently from a man who had reached into a purse and stolen a similar sum. In this case, he was a father of seven, and though he was gainfully employed, it was not gainful enough. His debt was to a baker, a man named Karr, who lived in Camden Street, and the sum was forty pounds, no small amount in those days, when an oyster was a penny, a whole salmon a pound and six, and a clerk who worked for a tightfisted miser in a countinghouse might not earn as much in a year. Accounts were tallied, the sheriff was consulted, and men were sent in consequence. Our father—John his name, and thirty-seven—was taken by the sheriff’s men to what was called a “spong­ing house,” a kind of purgatory where those who could not meet their obligations were afforded some few days to seek relief from their creditors’ charges, intervention from a person of influence, or possibly a loan from family or friends. In this instance, help was not forthcoming. Two days passed with no good word, and then our John, officially an insolvent debtor, was passed along to the Marshalsea, imprisoned alongside smugglers, mutineers, and pirates. “The sun has set on me, forever,” he told his family as he left. One who tried to help was a son of John, who, then twelve, took a job, at six shillings a week in a tumbledown ­factory-house that sat on the banks of the River Thames. One day long afterward the boy would speak of the place, “Its wainscoted rooms and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffing coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again.” His job was to fill small pots with shoe blacking, and tie them off with paper, and then to paste on each a printed label. The boy worked ten hours a day, standing near a window for better light and where any passersby might see him, with a break for a meal at noon, and one for tea later on. And though the place was grim and the work was numbing, and this had put his childhood to an end, he worked on. For his father was in prison. For a debt of forty pounds. For his family’s bread. “My whole nature was so pen